by Jane Yolen
“There is much to be forgiven,” I whispered back sourly. But inwardly I smiled, and thought: The fish has been truly caught.
“The king is like a selfish child,” said the queen, still in that same quiet voice. “But he is only as dangerous as the company he keeps. Now, Nicola, listen carefully to what we have planned.”
I moved by her side.
“Tonight we will make our way down the back stair to which my husband has the only key. From there we will go to the quarters of my French servants, who stand ready to help.”
“May all the angels guard you on your way, Majesty.”
“I have a further favor to ask of you, my Jardinière,” the queen said, taking my hands and speaking in a hurried whisper. “You must contact Dougal at the stables. See that there are horses waiting for us beyond the abbey graveyard just after the midpart of the night. The postern gate is always kept fastened, but in such disrepair, we will be able to squeeze through. Even me!”
“I will, Majesty. But what then?”
“Lady Huntly...” she glanced around again. “Lady Huntly has already smuggled out a letter for me instructing those nobles still loyal to gather their troops at Castle Dunbar.” Her eyes were bright and she seemed to have an inner glow as she spoke.
“Do you know how many will be loyal, Madam?”
“With God’s help we will find out tonight.” She leaned back in the chair smiling. “Now I believe I will eat. Plotting is such hungry work.”
I marveled that six months pregnant, surrounded by vicious men who had threatened her life, she showed no sign of fear nor would she entertain any suggestion of defeat. Gone was the grave woman of the night before. Here was the true Mary of Scotland.
If courage were a crown, I thought, there could be no greater queen in all the world.
That evening, past the quarter of twelve, I waited on the far side of the graveyard with Dougal and the queen’s escort—Sir Anthony William Standen, Arthur Erskine, and Lord Traquair. The horses’ hooves had been muffled with cloth, and the men held their hands on the steeds’ noses to keep them from making any extra noise.
Fidgeting with the lace collar of my dress, I fretted uncontrollably. A dozen things might yet go wrong this night:
Darnley might change his mind again.
A turncoat servant might speak out for a purse of gold.
Lord James might come upon us on the road.
Lord Ruthven might spy us out with magic.
The queen might miscarry.
As the moon made its passage across the sky, I saw that the men around me were no less agitated than I. It was now half-past the hour and the queen not here yet. Even the horses were beginning to stamp their muffled hooves and snort restlessly.
“Hssst!” It was Dougal. He pointed a shadowy arm.
Ahead, two dark figures detached themselves from the darker bulk of the palace and made their way towards us, darting between the gravestones and pushing through the postern gate.
Beside me I heard the click of a pistol being cocked and the metal sigh of a sword drawn from its scabbard.
“Wait!” I said. “The moon will tell us whether friend or ...”
But the moon was hidden behind a wisp of cloud and the figures were all but on us when the bulkier of the two figures cried out in sight of me.
“My dear friends,” came the queen’s hoarse whisper, “your loyalty to a lonely fugitive is more eloquent than any devotion offered a queen upon her throne.”
Darnley said nothing but made straight for a horse. Seizing its bridle, he hissed impatiently. “Come, we must be gone.”
We helped the queen onto Erskine’s horse, and she put her arms around his waist, riding pillion behind him.
“You, too, Nicola,” cried the queen. “I will not go without you.”
Till that very moment, I had not suspected I was to accompany her in her flight. Indeed I had not looked beyond this moment.
“To me, girl,” Lord Traquair called, leaning down and pulling me up behind him.
I held as tight as I could to his ample waist, for I was suddenly shaking with the cold, and feared I might fall.
Then, eager to be away, we all galloped down the road past the dark hump that was Arthur’s Seat, the moon now full above us.
We rode like the dickens, but it was the king who drove us most fiercely, his voice straining with terror.
“Come on! Come on!” he yelled once we were away from Holyrood. “By God’s blood they will murder me if they catch us!”
“The queen is with child, my lord,” I called over Lord Traquair’s shoulder to Darnley. I was furious else I would never have spoken so. “No one pursues. Would you have her lose the babe?”
He glared at me and turned in his saddle to shout at the queen. “If this one dies,” he cried, “we can have others.”
We rode for five hours, stopping only once to change horses. It was an hour past dawn, the early spring light pearly on the hillsides, when we came in sight of Castle Dunbar.
“Madam, look!” I cried, pointing with one hand, the other still secure around Lord Traquair’s waist.
There were hundreds of men camped round the castle—thou—sands even—like a great hive of buzzing insects. A cheer went up when the queen was recognized.
Bothwell rode out to meet us, proudly gesturing at the army he had gathered, the beekeeper showing off to the queen bee.
“Huntly, Atholl, and Fleming are already here,” he said, his voice booming out in the soft spring air.
Bothwell seemed so loud, I actually winced. And then I realized it was the first time any of us had spoken loudly in days. Not since Davie had been killed. Our voices—like our bodies—were now free.
“Brava, Majesty!” I cried out. Raising my hands above my head, I began applauding, which almost led to me falling from Lord Traquair’s horse.
The queen laughed. Then she took off her bonnet and shook loose her hair. Though she had just come through twenty miles on horseback, pregnant and frightened, she looked as fresh as if she had just risen from her bed.
Bothwell laughed with her. “Madam, more have sent word that they will arrive before the day is out,” he boomed.
There was no missing the way he ignored the king, and the queen did not correct him for it. I saw Darnley bristle, but secretly I was glad. How irrelevant he had become now that the queen was free and among her own supporters. That he should know it fully gave me the greatest pleasure. I turned in the saddle and stared at Darnley, my lips forming the words: Who is the fool now?
The queen was so overcome by the sight of her many followers massed before the castle, she had to swallow twice before she could speak. But at last she said, “It is as grand a company as ever I saw.”
“In a day or two we will be ready to march on Edinburgh,” Bothwell told her. “And the devil take any who stand against us!”
As it turned out, no one did.
Only a week after her escape, the queen rode back in triumph into Edinburgh at the head of an army of eight thousand men. Her “dear Scots” crowded the streets to cheer her on. Lord James came in person to welcome her home and—at least publicly—rejoined her cause.
As for Ruthven and his murderous crew, they were long gone. With no queen for a prisoner and no king for a figurehead, they had nothing to play with. Abandoning the palace, they had fled for their lives, and were already halfway to England, hoping to find sanctuary there for their treacherous souls.
Checkmate.
SCOTLAND
1567-1568
A longing haunts my spirit day and night,
Bitter and sweet, torments my aching heart.
Between doubt and fear, it holds its wayward part,
And while it lingers, rest and peace take flight.
—poem by
MARY QUEEN OF SCOTS, 1568
32
APPARITION
Davie’s body was removed from the common grave and given a proper burial at the chapel royal. I was th
ere, of course, sitting behind the weeping Maries.
But I had no more tears to shed. I had already grieved in his blood, and had spent the rest of my sorrow in the terror of the days that followed.
However, I remained behind after the funeral mass, standing by Davie’s grave site. There was much I still needed to say.
I had made a small bouquet of flowers from my own little garden—a mallow which meant “ambition,” a wallflower which signified “fidelity in misfortune,” and a bunch of snow-white anemones for “withered hopes.” I had bound the flowers round with a cypress bough for mourning. Davie would understand.
I also took one of the golden roses from the altar because the priest had said that the rose stood for the mortal body and the gold color for the immortality of the soul. It was the last thing I would be able to do for Davie, and I wished to do it well.
Finally satisfied with the positioning of the garland, I knelt in prayer, hoping that whatever wrongs Davie had done would be forgiven him. I thought that if I could love him with all his faults—his ambition, his pride, his bitterness—how much more Almighty God must love one who had suffered so much.
“You see, Davie,” I whispered, “your faults are now graces. Sing well before the throne of heaven. God will love every song.”
I pricked my finger on purpose on a rose thorn and left a drop of my blood on the grave. If there was any magic, blood for blood, Davie would have it of me.
Standing, I crossed myself, and turned towards the abbey.
And there, walking towards me, was the last person in all the world I could have thought to see.
“Dear Lord!” I cried out, crossing myself again. What had that single drop of blood wrought?
It was an apparition—Davie as he would have looked had not nature’s cruel hand afflicted him at birth. There were the same black curls, the same sparkling green eyes, the same eyebrows like crow’s wings.
Davie indeed.
Yet how could it be?
I began to tremble violently, and I think I opened my mouth to scream, though no sound came out.
The apparition came closer and I stood, unable to run.
“They tell me you are Nicola Ambruzzi,” said the apparition, greeting me with a bow. Even the voice was the same, with its Italian lilt.
“Y-yes,” I stammered. “Da ...” Davie’s name died on my lips.
“You think I am my poor brother,” the revenant finished for me. “All the family wears this face.” He touched a hand to his cheek. “I am not David. I am Joseph Riccio, come from Paris to take Davie’s place.”
I continued to stare at him, looking—I suppose—very much the witless fool many took me to be.
“His brother,” I repeated, stupidly.
Joseph Riccio nodded and smiled, not unkindly. “Poor dear Davie,” he lamented. “He had so many gifts. Yet he felt his life blighted by a curse: crooked back, shortened leg, misshapen face.”
“Yet he achieved so much, you know, despite those,” I said, my voice halfway between a whisper and a cry.
“He did,” Joseph Riccio agreed.
“He did,” I repeated stupidly.
Again Joseph smiled. “And however high he rose, he never forgot his family. Year after year, he has sent us money, presents, letters; letters that were filled with your name.”
“My name?” I echoed in surprise. I had not known Davie had any family, let alone that he had told them about me.
“He told us many times of your kindness—and your beauty.”
“Beauty, no. He could not have said that.” I blushed and looked down.
“He did. And now I see for myself that he wrote in truth.” Joseph offered me his hand. “You have an angel’s face as well as an angel’s heart. I hope that we, too, Nicola, can be good friends.”
I clasped his outstretched hand in mine and could not help but feel that my prayers and my blood had brought me a great gift.
For this, I thought, is how Davie must look in heaven, his twisted back and leg set straight by the gentle hands of angels and the boundless love of God.
“We will,” I assured Joseph, knowing that it was true. “We will be true friends indeed.”
33
A WEE LAD
Mere months after Joseph’s arrival, Queen Mary was brought to childbed. For the purposes of safety, we carried her by litter from Holyrood to Edinburgh Castle, a mile away. Lord Bothwell had insisted. Edinburgh Castle, he said, was that much easier to defend, as it perched like a great eagle on top of a granite aerie.
The queen did not object. I think she hated the idea of giving birth in the rooms where David had been so brutally slain.
We brought her up to her new apartments, in the southeast corner of the old palace. Her bed was hung with blue taffeta and velvet. In the next room stood a cradle with almost ten ells of Holland cloth wrapped around it waiting for the child.
“I can be happy here, I think,” she said as she gazed through the window at the town way below. From so far away it looked like a gentle and quiet place, not the bustling city I knew.
On the nineteenth of June, before eleven in the morning, after a long and difficult labor, the queen gave birth to a healthy boy, whom she named James after her father. He was born with a thin, fine caul stretched over his face, like a spiderweb.
I shuddered to see it.
Mistress Asteane, the midwife, wiped the baby off, reserved the caul, and put him in his mother’s arms.
“Did I nae tell ye it would be a boy?” she said to the queen as one of her old women helpers sopped up the blood. “And a braw laddie he is, too.”
The queen’s face was drawn and white from the long labor. She coughed slightly as she took the child. But then she smiled down at him and looked like a Madonna painted for a church wall: content and unworried about the future.
Braw young Jamie was. He certainly had iron lungs and did not stop wailing for the first three hours after he was born. But that caul worried me. My mother had always said of cauls that they brought the sight to some, and bad luck to others.
Some of the bad luck was surely Darnley’s, for the birth of his son moved him further down the line for both the Scottish and the English thrones.
But—I wondered, listening to the baby’s unceasing wails—where else might such bad luck fall?
Pretty Mary ran to bring the news to Sir James Melville, who rode to London to give word of the birth to the English queen. He sped so fast, he covered the near four hundred miles in five days, a feat few could match. When he returned, he told us that Elizabeth had fallen into a chair weeping. “The Queen of Scots is lighter of a fair son, while I am but of barren stock,” she had said.
“If she remains barren,” Regal Mary said as we sat attending to our sewing, “you know who will be king of England.”
“Who?” I asked.
“Oh, la, Nicola—only a fool does not know,” said Pretty Mary.
“The young baby, of course. Our Jamie,” Jolly Mary said.
Regal Mary added, “He stands closest to the English throne from both his mother’s and his father’s sides. Imagine—our Jamie king of England and Scotland, too.”
I thought of our Jamie, red-faced and bawling in his carved oak cradle with its sides of inlaid wood. I thought of that caul.
Sometimes, I thought, it is best not to think of the future.
“To our Jamie!” I said, picking up my glass of wine.
And we drank to the wee babe.
Darnley finally left his parties to come and view the child, but he took his time doing it. There was a persistent rumor about in the town—so Joseph reported—that the child was not Darnley’s. His reluctance to see wee Jamie at once lent a measure of truth to such slanders. I could have cheerfully throttled him for lending credence to such lies.
When he arrived at last, he was directed into the queen’s bedchamber, for she was not yet recovered from her long labor. She was also weakened by an insistent cough that had kept her awake for night
s, as well as Jamie crying for his feedings, for she had insisted the baby stay in her own room instead of the nurse’s. To my certain knowledge, the queen had had little sleep for days.
She told us that the door to her bedchamber must stand ajar. “So that I can call for help if needed,” she said before another fit of coughing took her.
The four Maries and I sat in the outer chamber, our embroideries to hand, though we hardly worked a stitch. Jolly Mary kept using her embroidery hoop as a fan.
I was closest to the bedchamber door, Pious Mary closest to the hearth, though it being the end of June there was no fire going. But that was the side on which the fire tools stood.
“What are they saying?” Pretty Mary whispered.
“Hush!” Regal Mary told her.
For the most part the queen and Darnley kept their voices low. We could hear little, though it was not for lack of trying! But all at once their conversation heated up and their voices were raised.
Darnley protested loudly. “I never ...” he said.
Just as loudly, the queen replied, “The slander has been laid at your door, my lord, that the child is Riccio’s and not your own.”
Pretty Mary’s hand went to her mouth.
I stood and started towards them, my fists clenched.
“Sit!” hissed Regal Mary.
Queen Mary’s voice got even louder. “God has given me a son begotten by none but you. He is so much your own son, I fear it will be the worse for him hereafter.”
“What does she mean?” I whispered.
All four of them rounded on me, fingers to their lips. “Hissssst!”
“Sweet Madam,” the king’s voice whined, “is this your promise that you made to forgive and forget all?”
“I have forgiven all, but can never forget.”
“Madam, these things are all past.”
“Then let them go.”